Bad Boys

“What do you think? A man had two children; he went to the first and said, 'Child, go and work in the vineyard today. He answered, ‘I will not’; but later he changed his mind and went. The father went to the other and said the same; and he answered, ‘I will, sir’; but he did not go.” (Mt 21:28-30)

In this parable Jesus presents us with a tale of two bad boys. Though most English translations speak of two sons, in the Greek they are not sons –
hyioi – but children –
tekna. This means they are boys and not men; they have not reached that profound spiritual identity expressed in the Scriptures by the word “son” and exemplified
par excellence by the Son of God. Both boys have a messed-up relationship with their father, both have serious issues with authority, and both behave badly. One, however, may be on the road to something better. Let us look more closely at their respective choices.

“I don’t wanna!”

The first boy cannot take a direct command, and his knee-jerk reaction is to refuse point blank. “You’re not the boss of me. I’m my own man and I’m not going to let anyone walk over me!” He turns his back and takes himself off to a vacant lot on the other side of town. There he engages in a little wanton destruction to help him process his feelings. He’s sick to the back teeth of being his father’s little man, his go-to person for every task. He’s tired of bearing on unwilling shoulders the weight of expectation: “One day you will stand in your father’s shoes.” He couldn’t imagine anything worse – everything already determined with no room for himself and what
he wants. The boy kicks at a half-rotten fence post until is disintegrates, pulls the heads off the wild flowers that litter the place, and throws stones at the crows, without managing to hit one. Exhausted, he slumps on a bench by the river and watches an empty plastic bag get pulled along by the brown current. “Who am I?” he asks, “And what do I really want?”

It begins to dawn on him that he is all alone, and he is not happy. He thinks of the young men in the vineyard chipping in to the common task, of the companionship amidst heat and hard labor, and the unspoken communion between weary bodies and minds at the close of the day. He realizes that he just treated his father like dirt, though his father had not even raised his voice, much less his hand to force the point. The world outside his father’s vineyard seems like a barren place, and within himself only a great void.

At length, he comes to the conclusion that it would be stupid to stay out here being miserable when what he actually wants is to be with the others in the vineyard. Although he’s not sure if he can look his father in the eye after what happened this morning, he can at least show up and pitch in, letting his body speak the contrition his mouth can’t put into words.

“I’m your man, sir!”

The other boy is smart. He has learned from life and knows that the best way to get along is to go along, and then, when the paternal back is turned, do his own thing. It’s all very simple: he makes sure to show his face as the laborers gather and tasks are given, then, once work is underway, he slips away unnoticed. After all, he is not the first son, and no one pays him much attention. Duty done, he heads off to a favorite haunt – the amusement parlor downtown where neighbourhood kids hang out and play pool. The owners turn a blind eye if the underage kids want to play on the slot machines, and fuel the fun with a steady supply of cigarettes and booze. They want to create customers for life.

Does this boy feel any doubt that he has done the right thing? He would not be human if he didn’t. But he knows that thinking causes him to question himself, and questioning himself makes him feel guilty. He doesn’t like to feel guilty, so he decides not to think. The room is warm, the air hazy with smoke and the banter continuous. He allows himself to ride on this wave of pleasurable feeling until five o’clock comes. He is smart. He knows exactly how long it will take him to cover the distance from downtown to the vineyard for the gathering at end of day. The sudden burst of fresh air will redden his cheeks and he will even break into a sweat as he jogs across town. He slips in among the others inconspicuously. Even if some of them smell a rat, he doesn’t care what those losers think. His father won’t notice a thing, as usual.

Metameletheis

Something to notice here is that these boys have one and the same father. The parable indicates that he treats them just the same. He makes the same request of each and receives each one’s response, whether positive or negative, in silence. If the first feels that he has too much father, and the other too little, this would be a projection of each boy’s mind. Both lack an accurate picture of their father, as well as awareness of themselves and their motivations. The difference between them lies in their process of choosing, and the parable lays this out with extreme concision.
The first: he refuses, he changes his mind, he goes.
The other: he agrees, he does not go.

The Greek word
metameletheis denotes the critical difference. It means to change one’s mind, feel regret or repent, and this not instantaneously but with care, taking pains to think deeply, meditate and weigh alternatives. This is what the first boy was up to at the vacant lot. It leads him to see things differently. The choice to turn and do his father’s will comes with the realization that this is what he actually wants and what will make him happy. He does not pretend to want what his father wants, or persuade himself that he does, much less force himself to acquiesce. He finds out from looking within that his will and his father’s will are at one, and this is happiness. Of course, he doesn’t have it all together yet. He still has a way to go in discovering and making peace with who he is, who his father is and what this will mean for his life. He’s likely to fall on his face again. But he has made an enviable discovery and set his foot on the way of communion.

The other boy’s process is sadly truncated by the omission of reflection and deep thought. He renders himself impervious to the pricks of regret. So he continues under the illusion that he is a free man and his father is a fool. What he misses is that he does care what his father wants, so much so that he has split himself in half and cannot bear to face his own guilt and desperate need for the father’s love. We can only hope that, by the grace of God, things will come to a crisis in this boy’s life, so that he will be forced to face what he is hiding from himself.

“What do you think?”

Christian tradition tells us that the wounds of original sin include impaired clarity of mind, heart and will, and concupiscence, or the tendency to want what is not good for us. Psychologists tell us that few if any make it through early childhood development without contracting a false self-image and an ambivalent relationship with authority. So Jesus’ challenge is for all of us as we confront the illusions we carry about ourselves and others. We are called to grow into true sons or daughters of the Father. Perhaps the stories of these bad boys can be an invitation for each one of us to look more deeply into our choices and motivations. “What do you think?” says Jesus.
Metameletao – to allow ourselves to be pricked into thinking deeply – is our way from illusion to freedom and mature sonship, “until all of us come to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to maturity, to the measure of the full stature of Christ” (Eph 4:13).